Maple Class - Year Three (Miss Bickerdyke)

A very warm welcome back to school after the half term, I hope you've all had a lovely week off with your families and are ready for the next 8 weeks! We have lots of exciting learning in the run up to Christmas.

Topic

Healthy Humans

For this half term, we will be learning about how to keep ourselves healthy. We will be learning all about The Eatwell Plate, the food groups and the nutrients we should be eating. We will be learning to cook healthy foods and we are going to prepare a picnic for the parents!

We will also be learning about exercise and the effects of exercise on our body especially our heart. We will learn about warm ups and cool downs. The children will experience different exercises they may not have done before.

First, we are going to learn about fables, we will be reading a range of Aesop's Fables and retelling them orally and in writing. We will then write our own fable with a moral for other people to follow.

Next we will look at persuasive letters, we will link this to our Healthy Humans topic and I will be asking for their opinions and they will share them in a letter.

Finally we will be getting into the Christmas spirit by writing our own shape poems.

Alongside our English lessons, we will be doing whole class guided reading where we look at a range of text types and children will build on their vocabulary and comprehension skills.

We will be doing 5 spellings sessions over a 2 week period, where the children are learning, practising and applying the new words. We will also be doing 5 grammar sessions over a 2 week period and to begin with we will be looking at word types and sentence structure.

Maths

For the first half term we will be focusing on addition and subtraction. We will do this through practical, concrete and abstract learning, where the children will use a range of objects, mental strategies, jottings and formal written methods. We will be starting with fluency questions and then moving onto reasoning questions where the children apply their knowledge.

During Autumn 2, the children will be focusing on:

Adding and subtracting units, tens and hundreds.

Pattern spotting.

It is really important that children are confident with addition and subtraction as this will support their learning in all other areas of maths. Any adding and subtracting they can do at home will help e.g. shopping lists, ingredients and playing games.

We will also be focusing on learning times tables, we will begin by ensuring the children are confident with 2x, 5x and 10x before moving onto 3x and 4x.

RE

At the beginning of November, we are going to focus on Remembrance Day and what happened 100 years ago. We will think about how God protected those people.

We will then look at "Mary, the mother of God" and what she teaches us about God's way and why she was chosen to carry Jesus into this world.

Finally, we will look at the time of Advent and Christmas and why it is a special time for Catholics and how we should celebrate it.

General class information

Reading is one of the most important skills we teach our children, whether it is a nonfiction text to help them research, a set of instructions to help them make something or reading a fiction to improve their imagination and provide them with amazing vocabulary. We ask that you read with your child 3 or 4 times a week, although they will be provided with a reading book, it is great if you can they have a different book that they are engaged with. Encourage children to use their phonics to help with word reading and use expression in their voice once they are fluent.

PE will take place every Tuesday afternoon, please ensure children have their PE kits in school and they are clearly labelled.

Toast is available for snack but children must bring £1 at the beginning of the week and they will get a slice of toast each day. Children can bring cereal bars, fruit or veg from home for a snack too. Water will be available throughout the day, children can bring their own bottle but it must be labelled.

Homework is sent home at the beginning of each half term and they have until the last week to complete it.

If you have any queries or want to chat about your child’s progress, feel free to catch me after school on the playground or make an appointment with Mrs Thompson in the school office.